Fighting in Lebanon and Israel 'might engulf the entire region as well as what is left of faith in American ideals in the Muslim world,' writes UCLA Fulbright Coordinator Ann Zwicker Kerr in the Aug. 14 Christian Science Monitor.

UCLA Fulbright Coordinator Ann Zwicker Kerr published an op-ed on the U.S. role in prolonged fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia of Lebanon in the Aug. 14, 2006, edition of The Christian Science Monitor. Kerr is in charge of the Visiting Fulbright Scholar Enrichment Program for the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, housed at the UCLA International Institute. The program is one of six of its kind in the United States.

"The tragic cross-border fighting of the past few weeks, with both sides unrestrained by the US, has escalated into a war that might engulf the entire region as well as what is left of faith in American ideals in the Muslim world," Kerr writes.

Kerr attended the American University of Beirut in the 1950s and has recently interviewed six of her former classmates, including two quoted in the op-ed, for a new book project. She is author of Come With Me From Lebanon: An American Family Odyssey (1994) and Painting the Middle East (2002).

Kerr's late husband, Malcolm Kerr, served as president of the American University of Beirut from 1982 until his assassination two years later. In the Aug. 14 article, she writes,

Those who shot Malcolm killed not just a man but a set of values he embodied as the president of the American University of Beirut, an institution that had brought ideals of open inquiry and tolerance to the Middle East for more than a hundred years—and had in turn been enriched by the students and professors from the entire region who came to learn and teach there. But American policy in the region was increasingly contradicting American values symbolized by AUB.

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